Big Banana Bake-Off begins Fairtrade Fortnight in Sunderland

Last year's event was a big success

A BIG Banana Bake-Off, Fairtrade-themed church service and ceilidh are all on the cards as Fairtrade Fortnight 2014 launches in Sunderland today.

An event, hosted by the Mayor of Sunderland, Bob Heron, is taking place at Sunderland Minster today for fairtrade supporters from schools, churches and businesses.

From 12.30pm, people can find out more about fairtrade and organic food and sample dried fruit, nuts and snack bars, as well as buy jewellery and accessories made by a women’s project in Africa.

This year, the main theme is to make bananas fair and a petition will be handed to the Government to call for an investigation into banana-related pricing and practices.

The Mayor said: “Fairtrade is about people. Farmers in developing countries who work hard to provide us with the things we love, such as bananas, tea, coffee and cocoa, and the people here who support fairtrade so that farmers receive a fair deal.

“Many individuals and organisations in the city are now showing their support by choosing fairtrade. There are more than 4,500 fairtrade products available, many to be found in the city’s shops and cafes, and I would encourage everyone to support this international campaign and help to make a real difference.”

The event and programme of activities is organised by Sunderland Fair Trade Partnership.

“The Fair Trade Partnership is made up of a host of organisations working together to promote Fairtrade. Through the Fairtrade premium, farmers have safe working conditions and earn enough to have a decent standard of living.

“I hope more communities and organisations will take part in the campaign.”

Posters designed by young people to promote Fairtrade in Sunderland will be on display. More than 200 poster designs were received as part of a competition and the winning poster will be printed and distributed to city Fairtrade outlets for display.

Events planned in Sunderland as part of Fairtrade Fortnight include speeches and debates and a banana bake-off at Sunderland College, a film night at Black Gold, themed assemblies and classes in schools, a fairtrade-themed service at Sunderland Minster, information stands in The Bridges and a family ceilidh.

Three city schools – Benedict Biscop and St Paul’s Primary Schools and Venerable Bede Secondary School – are all getting in on the act with a fairtrade project linked to their churches.

Pupils will create a large fairtrade banner, make a banana tree of ideas and play a banana game. The project will see them linking activities with their respective churches.

Children will also have the opportunity to visit the factory at Fullwell Mill Ltd, which produces fairtrade snacks, and there will be a fairtrade plants trail at Sunderland Museum and Winter Gardens. Call 561 1163 for more details about the events.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Sunderland Echo provides news, events and sport features from the Sunderland area. For the best up to date information relating to Sunderland and the surrounding areas visit us at Sunderland Echo regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Sunderland Echo requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.